stars, sex and nudity buzz : 12/15/2012

Hayley Atwell: 'I've turned out all right'

Hayley Atwell has been called a young Charlotte Rampling, the next Keira Knightley and Woody Allen's muse. She's conquered the costume drama, the romcom and the action flick. So, who is she really? Gerard Gilbert meets a restless talent who says, with stunning understatement...

'That's so rock 'n' roll", observes Hayley Atwell cheerily when I tell her that the room we had been loaned at a private club is no longer available because Suggs – a member, unlike us, and therefore unmoveable – is in there, snoozing on the sofa. In contrast to the Madness frontman, Atwell arrives looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, despite jet-lag and twisting her knee while out jogging, her brown eyes and honeyed skin off-set by a carefully-chosen-that-morning, she says, red chemise. She's up for anything that Immo, the photographer, suggests. "Let's have some fun," she tells him.

"I can't imagine it if beauty was the only currency I used as an actress," she says later. "It just doesn't interest me. I remember there was an opportunity when I was younger to model… I went to Storm modelling agency and the woman just went 'I think you'd be really bored'. Not to say I haven't met incredibly bright models but I'd feel very, very restless."

Thus providing me with a neat segue, for Restless happens to be the title of her latest project, a three-hour BBC adaptation (showing in two parts) of William Boyd's Second World War spy novel that is showing over Christmas. Boyd's period page-turner tells of the covert British operation to persuade America to join the struggle against Hitler, Atwell playing Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré in pre-war Paris who is recruited for the British Secret Service.

The story is split between the war years and the long hot summer of 1976, when young Oxford language tutor Ruth Gilmartin (played by Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery) discovers that her mother, Sally, is in fact the aforementioned Eva Delectorskaya. Charlotte Rampling plays the older Eva.

"I was delighted to play a younger Charlotte Rampling," says Atwell, 30. "I've spent a little time with her socially and I've worked with her twice before – in The Duchess, and on this independent film, I, Anna, which her son (Barnaby Southcombe) wrote and directed. She'd suggested me to play her daughter… we're kind of merging."

This will also be the second time in two years that Atwell has embodied a 1940s William Boyd protagonist, having been Logan Mountstuart's second wife and the love of his life, Freya, in Channel 4's Bafta-winning version of Any Human Heart. Her career began rapidly after leaving drama school in 2005, with the part of the bipolar, self-harming Catherine Fedden, in Andrew Davies's BBC2 adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, before becoming Woody Allen's latest muse in his London-set 2007 drama, Cassandra's Dream.

"I wish I felt like his muse but I hardly felt he ever talked to me", comments Atwell, adding that when they did speak, his advice was minimal – her description of his working method shedding some light on the strangely anonymous nature of Allen's late-career output. "I'd say 'what am I doing here? Who is this girl?' and Woody was like 'Oh, you know, she's just a girl…' and I'd go 'right… OK'. It was an odd time, I was incredibly grateful for the experience and the doors that it opened to me and meeting someone like Woody. But I felt very rabbit-in-the-headlights."

A series of high-profile costume dramas ensued – in Julian Jarrold's Brideshead Revisited, in which her bewitching Julia Flyte was one of the better elements in an otherwise flawed movie, and opposite Keira Knightley in The Duchess, a role that elicited the almost Pavlovian response from journalists that the then 26-year-old Atwell was "the new Keira".

"And I said (putting on a cockney accent) 'No, I'm 'Ayley, and I'm goin' to do a theatre job now', which is what I did. I never saw myself as this kind of flash in the pan… I never wanted to be discovered… I found that terrifying because you're almost chosen by the celebrity culture to be this new thing, this kind of pin-up or something. I didn't think there was much creativity in that, or much freedom, and (after The Duchess) I purposively turned down those kinds of roles to do Major Barbara on stage at the Olivier in a dowdy Salvation Army uniform."

Sharing a film set with Knightley on The Duchess was, however, an eye-opener. "I saw someone who is spending a lot of energy fighting off a lot of press attention. I wouldn't wish that kind of attention on anyone." Does Atwell herself ever get hounded? "I think I can really make myself invisible… sometimes to a fault," she says. "I remember when I started doing interviews and being recognised once or twice, friends from school would ring me and say 'You're such a dark horse because you weren't all that at school…'."

'Friends' can be so charming. Actually she was known as 'Hayley Fatwell' at primary school. "I developed really early and couldn't quite fit into girls' clothes and felt crap", she says. "I think that served me well – I had to develop different parts of my personality."

She was brought up by her mother, Allison, in a bohemian enclave off Ladbroke Grove in west London, after her parents split up when she two, and her father, Grant (part Native American and "a Tom Selleck lookalike") returned to America. In fact when we meet, Atwell is jet-lagged – in a hyper-alert kind of way – after returning from visiting him in California. A photographer-turned-shaman (his tribal name translates as "Star Touches Earth"), her father is now a massage therapist, and within minutes of meeting Saul Dibb, the director of The Line of Beauty, he was apparently giving him a back rub.

"My dad is an emotionally articulate man," says Atwell. "From a very young age he would say why [they separated], what I meant to him, how much he missed me – I didn't ever have to ask. I respect my parents for the decision they made because they turned out to be much happier as a result."

She would spend her summer holidays in Kansas City, where her father lived with her grandparents. "He was a real talker. He'd recite the lyrics of Joni Mitchell songs like they were poems and he'd recite Elizabeth Browning and he'd talk a lot about philosophy and metaphysics." In fact at an age when her contemporaries might have been into boy bands, Atwell was more interested in history's great thinkers, Descartes being a particular favourite. "I went to quite a rough comprehensive school [Sion-Manning Roman Catholic Girls' School] and I think it was a form of escapism really," she says. "Life really wasn't easy or privileged for a lot of people in my class – or for myself. My house was no bigger than theirs and we had no more money than they did."

Her mother worked as a motivational speaker. "She was very much influenced by this wave of New Age thinking that came over in the 1970s, people like Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson," says Atwell, rolling off their names like old friends. An only child, Atwell herself admits to being lonely. "I always felt there was something missing when I saw friends with siblings," she says. "But I've turned out all right… I'm fine."

If there was teenage rebellion, it was of the Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous variety. "I was very responsible," she says. "I spent so much time with adults that I felt really awful if kids were giving teachers a hard time." Perhaps as a result she was made head girl at Sion-Manning, and head of house when she joined the sixth form at the London Oratory School, one of the 10 per cent of non-Catholic pupils at the voluntary aided academy where Tony Blair sent his children. For Atwell, her new surroundings meant the twin discoveries of boys… and girls' full-contact rugby.

"I was a prop," she says. "I won a medal – it's the only thing I've ever won – for most improved player of 1999. I did it because all the cool girls in the year above played rugby, and all the hot guys." Did she play the field, as it were? "No. Within the first month I had settled down with someone I was madly in love with and stayed for the entire time."

Indeed she seems to have a strong monogamous streak. She met her long-term (now ex) boyfriend, TV writer Gabriel Bisset-Smith (a contributor to Channel 4's Skins) at drama school at Guildhall, where she went after having been offered a place at Oxford to read theology and philosophy, but which she couldn't take up after failing to gain the requisite A-level grades. "I think I kind of sabotaged it to be honest," she says. "I remember after it all happened and it was clear I wasn't going to go to Oxford I felt liberated."

Her contemporaries at Guildhall included Jodie Whittaker ("a great friend") and Dockery, who is playing her daughter in Restless – and Atwell paid her first-year fees with the proceeds of a TV advert for Pringles crisps. She says she regrets now being so open in interviews about her relationship with Bisset-Smith. "We were friends for seven years before we started a relationship and now we're friends again," she says. "I didn't plan that at all – I'm not some amazing ex-girlfriend at all.

"But it taught me a valuable lesson in where I draw the line on privacy. It's very odd to have to talk about someone, especially when they're not in the public eye and can't talk for themselves… I'd see certain things in print and think 'that is so reductive… I want to respect it more'." So is she seeing someone else now, I ask, testing her new-found resolve? "I'm kind of dating," she says in a mock cheesy American accent. "I'm not committed and he's not in the industry and that's really nice so we can keep it really separate."

In fact she seems to be highly aware of others' feelings. While filming sex scenes, for example, Atwell says she feels protective for the wives and girlfriends of the actors with whom she is simulating love-making. "It's people's worst fantasy to see their partner kissing someone else, even though it's a job and it's not real," she says. "Often I also get very protective of the guys I'm with, especially if you feel there's an insecurity there… they've really been working out or you know they've only agreed to show a left bum cheek or something." Does she get embarrassed doing sex scenes? "They're embarrassing to watch," she says. "I felt I couldn't watch my scenes in The Sweeney."

Those scenes were with Ray Winstone, so perhaps her squeamishness is understandable. Anyway, she says she did The Sweeney – as well as playing Peggy Carter, the kick-ass girlfriend of the eponymous Marvel Comics hero in Captain America: The First Avenger – because she "wanted to do something a little bit more physical-based rather than just a wistful, earnest looking into the distance."

She shares an American agent with Marion Cotillard and Kate Winslet and working in the States is something she'd consider, despite Hollywood being "a bit nuts and beauty-obsessed which is boring". But she's off to Ireland next to lead the cast in an ITV's drama Life of Crime, which follows the career of one policewoman across three decades, starting in 1985 Brixton. And she also just finished a comedy, the second series of Charlie Brooker's dystopian fables, Black Mirror. "I was a fan and called them up… I fought my arse off to get it done."

And in next year's Jimi Hendrix biopic, All is by My Side, she plays Kathy Etchingham, the girlfriend of the guitar maestro before he became famous and, like Atwell's mother, a working-class Mancunian. "She swears in every line and is a chain-smoking wild child from the Sixties, who had a notoriously tempestuous relationship with Jimi," says Atwell. "It's really nice playing working class which is ultimately my roots – a lot of people wouldn't have thought that."

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Olivia WildeSays She Has No Reservations About Getting Naked! Turns out Olivia has no shame when it comes to showing the world what her momma gave her. The actress said she generally is not prudish when it comes to her body and making a director's artistic vision come to life.

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Summer Glau gets racy in INSIDE THE BOX - Trailer

The production team of Inside the Box has released a first trailer for David Martín-Porras's short film.Summer Glau plays Sofia, the wife of a Texan cop (Matt, played by Wilson Bethel) who is forced to face a secret that he's been hiding from her in an effort to keep his family together when the local District Attorney (Stephanie, played by Regina King) comes knocking.

As the production team and the director David Martín-Porras mentioned before, fans of Summer Glau will be surprised by Summer's performance in this new dramatic role.

We can't wait to see the movie in DVD and VOD on February 2013.

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gorgeous Kate Mara in a see-through top in 'Shooter'. Mara can be 'seen' nextin upcoming Netflix House of Cards premiering in January.

Gambling, womanising and crazy stunts with dancing girls. Andrew Davies, the king of the TV corset drama, tells why he couldn't resist the outrageous story of the man who founded the legendary Selfridges emporium

On being given a book called Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge to adapt, top TV scriptwriter Andrew Davies says he was at first in two minds about taking the commission.

‘Shopping, well, I’ve never really liked going shopping very much,’ he admits. ‘But seduction. Yes, seduction I do like.’ The 76-year-old’s eyes actually twinkle as he says it. But then you wouldn’t expect anything less from the man who put the ‘Cor!’ into corset dramas when he made Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy sport a clinging wet shirt.

On being given a book called Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge to adapt, top TV scriptwriter Andrew Davies says he was at first in two minds about taking the commission

'But what finally persuaded him to take this particular job was Mr Selfridge, the American founder of the Selfridges store, himself. ‘He turned out to be very interesting indeed. He was a very charismatic character and an innovative businessman, but he had this weird self-destructive streak. 'He was addicted to risk in business, and in his personal life too. So we have a very rich central character. It made my job a lot easier.’

You can say that again. Harry Gordon Selfridge has the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-rags story. The only surprise is no one has thought to tell his tale before. He went from an upbringing in a single-parent home to the man who became known as the Earl of Oxford Street. But he died a pauper.

‘The fascinating thing is that the fruit of his labour is still here today – we can all go to Selfridges – and it’s in the same building,’ says Andrew. ‘The present company has been enormously enthusiastic about the whole thing – well, it will be terrific publicity for them.

'They’ve shown us around and given us access to their archives. The only thing they haven’t done is allowed us to go around the shop and choose something for free. But you can’t have everything!’

A showman and marketing genius from a young age, Harry worked his way up the ladder at Chicago department store Field Leiter and Company, where he’s credited with coining the phrases ‘The customer is always right’ and ‘Only so many shopping days until Christmas’. He became wealthy and married Rosalie Buckingham of a prominent Chicago family. While on holiday in London he spotted an opportunity and returned a few months later with £400,000 (around £23 million in today’s money) to set up Selfridges on Oxford Street.

Harry Gordon Selfridge was addicted to risk in business, and in his personal life too

The first ten-part series of Mr Selfridge – there will hopefully be four series to cover Harry’s eventful life – focuses on 1909, when he opened the store. We see him arriving from Chicago with his wife and four children. She never settled down awfully well and kept going back to America. ‘It didn’t help that he also had his mother living with them – she was a formidable old lady who’d been very strict with him. But when they got to London even she wasn’t able to keep him on the straight and narrow,’ says Andrew, laughing at the rules Harry made for his store. ‘They emphatically said there should be no hanky-panky between staff but there was a lot going on and Harry himself was the main culprit.’

He was an unashamed womaniser – having affairs with dancers Isadora Duncan and Anna Pavlova, and French singer Gaby Deslys. Once Rosalie died, his sexual proclivities knew no bounds. His love of women was to be the main reason for his eventual ruin – dancing twins Jenny and Rosie Dolly gambled away more than £5 million of his fortune.

Although the first series focuses on Harry’s happier early days, Andrew says, ‘You have a sense of the tragedy to come. He’s quite a problematic character from the start. He has his demons and by the end of the series his marriage is on the rocks. There’s quite a bit of darkness there.’

While Harry is obviously the main character, Andrew has created a vast supporting cast. It’s a mixture of real people and invented characters. ‘It’s a family story and a workplace drama. It feels like a big ocean liner – there’s a sense of a huge enterprise moving forward with Selfridge at the helm. We’ve used a lot of the real things Harry got up to to publicise his store.

If someone was in the news he’d get them in. Anna Pavlova came in and did a private dance. He got Blériot – the first person to fly the Channel – in with his plane and thousands of people came to see it.

‘But we’ve invented other characters our audience will hopefully love. We have a lovely young working-class girl called Agnes Towler, played by Aisling Loftus, who’s like our little heroine, and Zoë Tapper plays a girl we’ve called Ellen Love, Harry’s first mistress. There are lots of tremulous moments that are beautifully played. They’ll twang a few heartstrings.’

Thanks to Downton Abbey’s success, ITV has been able to give Andrew’s drama the sort of budget that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. ‘It looks stunning – like a big movie,’ he says. ‘The store looks incredible, though it was built in a disused carpet warehouse in Neasden.’

May 1914: The T Lloyd store on Oxford Street, London, foreground, before it was bought by Harry Selfridge

Jeremy Piven, best known for playing the explosive Ari Gold in Entourage, is cast as Mr Selfridge. ‘We were thrilled to get him,’ says Andrew. ‘I love his character in Entourage – he’s somebody who could get away with more than most people, just as Selfridge does. In the flesh he’s also very charismatic and cheeky and he has a playful manner that I’ve written into the script. 'Like Harry, he grew up in Chicago. But Jeremy’s a bit of a man of mystery too. You never quite know where he is, what he’s doing or what he’s thinking. It’s surprising.’Andrew tends to meet the show’s actors, who also include Frances O’Connor as Harry’s wife, Katherine Kelly and Samuel West, during read-throughs of the script. ‘I try to not go on set much,’ he says drily. ‘There’s never much for me to do apart from telling the actors how wonderful they are – they like that. I do most of my work in my study but I do try to go to read-throughs. Because the cast have got to know each other they’ve become like jolly get-togethers.

Often the actors will sneak up to me with good ideas for things their characters might do next. Ways in which their parts can be expanded and so on. Sometimes they work their way into the script. We have this wonderful French actor called Grégory Fitoussi, who plays the head of design. In that clichéd way I was thinking his character would be gay but when Grégory arrived he said, “I don’t see many women for me in this story. Usually I have many women.” And I thought, “Yes, you probably do need some women.” I love it when the actors make you change your opinion about a character.’

Former university lecturer Andrew is best known for his adaptations for the BBC – this is his first ITV commission since Dr Zhivago a decade ago. But he had a little fall-out with the channel when it cancelled two of the shows he was working on and announced it would be doing fewer corset dramas.

Now he’s working in direct competition with the BBC, which was determined its own show about a department store, The Paradise, based on an Émile Zola novel, would beat Mr Selfridge in the ratings and changed transmission dates so it aired first.

The Paradise attracted ratings of around five million – half of what Downton and Call The Midwife pick up. ‘As soon as it became known we were doing Mr Selfridge they dusted down this idea they’d had on the back burner for ten years and decided to do it. It was a surprise they got it on air before us, but I did enjoy it. I’m confident, though, that we have a terrific show and hopefully even more people will watch us.’

Indeed, ITV are so confident Andrew is already working on the second series. ‘I’ve really had fun writing this,’ he says. ‘I’ve even managed to get interested in fashion.

Undergarments principally. Corsets have always been an interest of mine.’ And with a cheeky laugh he’s off to imagine more shenanigans for Mr Selfridge and his staff.

Eyebrows were raised at the Miss England office as the reigning Miss England Charlotte Holmes, 24, poses in the latest collection of Christmas knickers from Fred and Ginger.

Model Charlotte – who also came eighth in this year’s Miss World final – models here for the designer lingerie brand.

Charlotte said: “For sexy underwear I would definitely go for brands like Fred and Ginger – this new range is fantastic. For Christmas, red and black colours are my favourite!

“Underwear has to make you feel sexy – but for everyday underwear I must admit I prefer comfy pants a la M-and-S.”

A spokesperson for Miss England - which does not allow competitors to pose nude or topless - said: “I have to admit this is a cheeky picture of Charlotte but it’s not quite considered as a rule-breaker.”

Miss England 2012 Final - Charlotte Holmes Post Final Interview The Miss England 2012 Winner moments after being crowned! Mark Darlington interviews Charlotte on behalf of Spotless Mind Productions upcoming DVD of the grand final that took place over 4 action packed days, ending at the Athena Theatre Leicester in June 2012!

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India becomes latest nation to succumb to S-and-M craze as conservative nation opens up about sex

India may have a reputation as a conservative society where sex is still a taboo subject, but that image could be fading fast.

The Asian giant is yet another nation to be swept up in the Fifty Shades of Grey craze, with the best-selling erotic trilogy encouraging S-and-M fans to come out of the closet for the first time.

A group of middle-class activists have formed The Kinky Collective, a Delhi-based group which provides support for lovers of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism (BDSM).

Trend: S-and-M has recently found a new popularity in India (file photo)

The runaway success of the Fifty Shades trilogy has brought BDSM out into the open throughout the world with its tale of a wealthy executive's torrid relationship with a young graduate.

And India is no different - while many are traditionally reluctant to discuss sex publicly, some have been emboldened by the books' success to spread awareness of the BDSM movement.

Transgender activist Sara and her partner took advantage of the Fifty Shades phenomenon by staging a simulated performance of one of the roughest moments from the book at a Delhi arts centre earlier this ear.

Many audience members were shocked by the explicit display, but Sara told the BBC that others praised her bravery in putting in such an uninhibited performance.

Inspiration: EL James' Fifty Shades trilogy is responsible for the new trend

Sara is a leading member of The Kinky Collective, which meets in an apartment in Delhi to discuss BDSM issues.

She says the group, which comprises around 15 members, has a 'dual purpose' - to educate the public about unorthodox sexual practices, and to keep BDSM fans informed about how to keep themselves safe.

Jaya, a 40-year-old woman who is also a member of the collective, told the BBC she was keen to dispel the misconception that BDSM is inherently violent and abusive.'I have been a feminist for 20 years, but I choose to be a submissive in my relationship,' she said.'I chose to give my consent and don't see this as violence, but an experience that is edgy, erotic and even spiritual.'

However, one doctor has warned that there is a dark side to India's new BDSM craze, as he says he frequently encounters patients who have been abused by their partners while having rough sex.

Sexologist Narayana Reddy told the BBC that one per cent of those who came to see him were concerned about acts such as being burned with cigarettes and being put on a leash like a dog.